No. 4.] EASTERN AND WESTERN FARMING. 163 



to-morrow. Dr. Sturtevant showed while at the Geneva 

 station that his lysinieter under grass leached from the soil 

 but 80,760 pounds of water, containing .3 pounds of nitro- 

 gen; while that tilled permitted 2,483,080 pounds of water 

 to pass through it, and 218.2 pounds of nitrogen per acre. 

 Fiom a tilled surface less water is evaporated than from an 

 untilled, and more passes off from the sub areas of the soil, 

 carrying with it fertility. From these surfaces more 

 material is washed and blown away while exposed to the 

 atmosphere, and continually rolled by tillage into the freer 

 embrace of the decomposing agencies of the air increasing 

 decomposition of organic matter, either faster than the 

 plants can make use of it or with the result that free nitro- 

 gen is formed. Leaching, occurring most in the spring and 

 fall, wdien least covered with crops, carries plant food 

 beyond the roots and largely into the streams. The J\Iis- 

 sissippi River thus gathers up and discharges 8,000,000 

 cubic feet of soil materials per hour, enough to lower the 

 immense basin of the Mississippi valley one foot in ten 

 thousand years. This of course represents the best part of 

 the soil. 



Harry Snyder found, as chemist of the Minnesota Experi- 

 ment Station, the following deeply impressive facts, which 

 I select from more abundant material of like tenor. Virsin 

 soil in Warren county, Minnesota, contained .38 of one per 

 cent of nitrogen, while an adjoining lot tilled for only ten 

 years contained but .25 of one per cent. Crookston County 

 contained .40 of one per cent of nitrogen, while adjoining 

 ground tilled for nineteen years contained but .21 of one per 

 cent of nitrogen. Land tilled for thirty years contained but 

 .16 of one per cent of this element. Was this material carried 

 away in crops ? Twenty-five bushels of wheat per acre with 

 its straw would for twenty years remove but from 800 to 900 

 pounds of nitrogen ; indeed, less than this, for the straw is 

 not all removed from the ground under the western system 

 of wheat growinof. Averaoino; the lots of the first two sets 

 of fiofures given, we find that .165 of nitroiren has been lost 

 from the soil. This, for an acre weighing 3,500,000 pounds, 

 represents an abstraction of 5,775 pounds of nitrogen. 

 Machinery and constant tillage splendidly expedite soil 



